Fostering a Sense of Place and Partnership in Geoscience Field Education with Indigenous and Other Communities

Geoscience education is rooted in experiential, field-based learning. In Canada, such experiences occur on the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples and often on land owned or managed by other parties. Inclusion of Indigenous voices, Knowledges and perspectives is critical to reconciliation and appropriate place-based education. Likewise, including knowledge and experiences of other local non-Indigenous communities can help contextualize field learning. We implemented such community-engaged learning practices in a senior undergraduate Geographical Sciences field course on Syilx lands near Oliver, BC in an effort to strengthen relationships with and honor the rights, knowledge, culture and history of the host First Nation; and to collaborate with other local land-owners and -managers in order to help students develop an understanding of the place, grounded in landscape history, local Knowledges and peoples. We used focus group discussions during field course, follow up conversations, and feedback in an anonymous post-course survey to evaluate the impact of these efforts, and to provide feedback to the community partners. This paper discusses these outcomes and provides some insights for other field courses.